Miro Soares ”Imprecise Itineraries”

Imprecise Itineraries #1 – First impressions of a city 4 screen video-installation / 3GP video in DV / 10’ / Bergen / 2009 All images recorded with NOKIA 6280 Directed by MIROSOARES, Images and editing MIROSOARES, Design MIROSOARES. The film is co-produced by CENTREPOMPIDOU and FORUMDESIMAGES/FESTIVAL POCKETFILMS.

Miro Soares work Imprecise Itineraries #1 – First impresions of a city is exhibited back to back with Farhad Kalantary´s work in the exhibition Trails of Water Behind a Passing Boat. They represent two different sides of our globalized world. Miro Soares, who has been an Artist in Residency at USF in Bergen for the past two months, benefit from the expanded mobility, and can be viewed as a ‘global citizen,’ while Farhad Kalantary who fled from Iran in the 1980´s can be viewed as a ‘global alien.’ He belonged to those forced into exile by war, poverty, or political and social upheaval. The ‘global alien’ will often be occupied with a sense of belonging, both from the country of origin and from the receiving country, while the global citizen’s presence is welcomed and his mobility is desirable.

Imprecise Itineraries #1 – First impressions of a city is the result of a project in which Miro Soares asked seven different people around the world to draw up any itinerary on a map that he should follow in his first days in Bergen. For seven days, these maps were guiding him, leading to his first impressions of the city. Each day he picked up a map randomly, using it as a reference as he was walking around the city. This walking device has determined his experience in the face of the city and the production of a video artwork.

The video was recorded using a cell phone camera and is divided in seven parts. Each part corresponds to one day and to a different itinerary. The artwork is conceived as a film-essay. It has a documentary approach, showing a kind of multiple “micro-events” in the daily routine, at the same time it has an approach very “pictorial”, which could express the point of view of a painter or of a photographer. An important element in the work is the aesthetic present in the images that corresponds to the “language” of this mobile device and reflects our time. Formally we can see all the issues related to the capture format and the equipment. We can see elements like progressive brightness, filtered audio capture, the 16 frames per seconds, etc. It’s also present the specificity in the camera movements in the space that follows the movement of the walking body.

This exhibition displays the two very recent works produced in Bergen. They are part of a group of works that could be described essentially as actions in the world; the environment, either urban or natural. It’s about contextual art. These works are part of a current segment in art that dedicates to the displacement, trip or walking, an important role in the creation process. The displacement, in this context, is not just a way of space movement, but equally a psychic fact, a tool for fiction in the production. This cineplastic transforms the city into a stage, as points the french critic Thierry Davila. This production can act in the limit between documentary and fiction, alternating between micro-politics and actions of fantastic (dream-like) order.